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I've just watched Alien: Covenant. I watched Prometheus quite a while back but don't fully remember the story, so I couldn't exactly relate the two movies. But from what I can tell, Covenant is just a continuation of Prometheus.

Could someone please explain the story in detail? Specially, who is/are ‘Prometheus’ and how are they related to the Aliens? Were the Aliens created by nature or were they created by us? (In Covenant David says that we spread the virus on the Prometheus planet.)

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    You may want to edit your question to make it more specific. Try to identify a key point of contention you have. Jul 9, 2017 at 14:13
  • “from what I can tell, Covenant is just a continuation of Prometheus” — it’s so much more than that. It’s also a re-tread of lots of previous Alien movies! Jul 9, 2017 at 14:30
  • Just to note: Prometheus and Aliens: Covenant retcon the old backstory of Aliens: i.e. in Predator 2 taking place in the 1990s we can see the Alien skull in Alien vs Predator we have info about Aliens in ancient times etc.
    – Yasskier
    Jan 28, 2020 at 4:48

2 Answers 2

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‘Prometheus’ is the space ship in the movie Prometheus which, based on ancient star maps discovered on earth, travels to the distant moon LV-223 (note: not LV-426, which we see in Alien and Aliens) in hope of finding an alien intelligence (the ‘Engineers’) that may have created life on earth.

In Prometheus, the crew discovers what appears to be a scientific or military installation belonging to the Engineers, with almost all of the inhabitants long since killed by creatures created by their own experiments with a black oily substance. Of the Prometheus crew

only one human (Elizabeth Shaw) and one android (David) survive. They take control of an Engineer ship, and set course for what they believe to be the Engineer home world.

(Wikipedia covers this quite well.)

In Alien: Covenant, the colonisation ship ‘Covenant’ lands on this same world, and the crew encounter David. Eventually, it’s revealed that

David released the black substance on the planet’s Engineer population before landing the ship, killing them all. He then spent years performing genetic experiments, including on Elizabeth Shaw, which culminated in his creation of what look very much like facehuggers, and subsequently a fully-grown alien, from the original Alien movie.

(Wikipedia covers this quite nicely too.)

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    So you saying that Alien which was originally created by David by spending many years of genetic Experiments ?
    – Jayendran
    Jul 9, 2017 at 14:55
  • @JayendranRosh it seems so. I wonder thaough if that means that the androids are better at those things than the engineers oO
    – Thomas
    Jul 9, 2017 at 15:04
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    @JayendranRosh: Of course, we also see an alien at the end of Prometheus, birthed from an Engineer who was impregnated by an alien that Elizabeth Ross cut out of herself, that looks a fair bit like the alien in Alien too, so heck knows what’s actually going on— these things seem to be scattered all over the damn galaxy at this point. Jul 9, 2017 at 18:41
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    @JayendranRosh: I have no idea if you’re wrong or not — we’re both just watching the same movies and trying to work out what’s meant to be going on in then, Jul 10, 2017 at 17:06
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    Even though this is an old answer, I feel I should point out that Xenopedia makes a point that the eggs in the original film and the ones in Covenant are separate kinds and that according to the novelisation of the latter film, David essentially reverse-engineered the eggs in Covenant after finding preserved/fossilized ones: avp.fandom.com/wiki/Ovomorph_(Egg) & avp.fandom.com/wiki/Ovomorph_(Planet_4) Jan 24, 2020 at 23:36
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Timeline:

  • Prometheus occurs in the years 2089 – 2093, landing on LV-223
  • David escapes LV-223 and creates the Xenomorphs between 2093 and 2104
  • Covenant occurs in the year 2104
  • Presumably, sometime between 2093 and 2122 the infected space jockey crashes on LV-426
  • Nostromo lands on LV-426 in the year 2122 in the original Alien movie.

The black goo:

The xenomorphs were created as the result of the Engineer's morphic goo -- but not by the engineers. The goo promotes a sort of hyper-evolution within any organism it comes into contact with.

In the beginning of Prometheus we see the goo used as a means for promoting life - where an engineer eats the goo and, with his sacrificial self, seeds life on... our primordial Earth.

The xenomorph is a weaponized version of an infected species - built using the infected species' own DNA; but whether that weaponized result was intended by the originating engineers, or not, is not disclosed.

LV-223 / Prometheus:

Humans, looking for their Creators (the engineers), arrive aboard Prometheus on LV-223.

The engineers on LV-223 are all dead except for one who is in stasis. Evidently they had a sort of civil war or techo-disaster concurrent with some of them making idols of and worshiping... someone who looks like themselves. There's a hologram that shows some engineers running from something; but it's a mystery what they were running from in the hologram.

David the Android:

Accompanying the humans in Prometheus is a self-worshiping android named David -- and he makes things worse - for everybody.

It is David who, along with Dr. Shaw, escapes from LV-223 to an unnamed planet inhabited by humanoids having an appearance similar to the engineers. It is also David who, upon arrival on the unnamed planet, releases the black goo and genocides the humanoid engineeresque inhabitants.

David created the Xenomorphs:

David, while marooned alone on the unnamed planet, "creates" the xenomorphs after studying and using the goo to manifest his own insane vision -- culminating with the familiar eggs and face-huggers.

Covenant:

The Covenant is a colony ship that is lured into going off course to investigate a radio signal of someone singing John's Denver's "country road" emanating from David's unnamed, unknown, uncharted planet.

The first human host seeded by David's face-hugger is the faithful captain of the Covenant.

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    I don't think they were a byproduct as much as how the substance was intentionally used...
    – DavidW
    Jan 24, 2020 at 23:44
  • Assuming the use at the start of Prometheus illustrates the intended purpose of the goo. Maybe byproduct isn't quite the right word. Jan 24, 2020 at 23:47

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